The Difference?

What feels different, now that I know Mr. Hate is gay?

The realization that there was NOTHING I could have done to save my marriage. Even if I did every single solitary thing the counselors said, we would have failed anyway, in the end, as he would have figured out he was gay eventually. This feels like....relief. Justification. Almost "I told you so." You see, inside I knew I was trying like crazy to fix us, to fix me, and I knew he wasn't trying. Not as hard as I was. And he continued to blame me, label me a failure, and I bought in to that. His accusations fit my insecurities, and made me feel totally unworthy of love. But I need to own that I bought into that, because I did. But now I feel relief. It wasn't me.

Justification is the part of me that sees now that not only was it not me, but that adult voice inside of me that knew he really wasn't trying has been completely vindicated. And the war inside of me between my childish, unsure self and my calmer, much more knowing adult voice has just found its clear winner. After 45 years!

LISTEN, girl! Hear what you now know. Your adult intuition has known all along what your childish self refused to relent. He didn't try. He lied, again and again. And you weren't too stupid to figure it out, you were too scared to stand and say "No!" But you lost your marriage anyway, and as it turns out, it's a financial hardship, but that's all. Almost every part of you lives in more truth now, and that can never be anything but a blessing.

Why does it feel different? My voice is different, it fears no lie now, but demands truth. My eyes are different now. Mr. Hate is not some hero, some out-of-my-league prize to show off to my high school enemies and thus refute their dismissal of me. He is no more than a man, and a pretty poor example at that.

In this moment, warmed by the thin winter sun and feeling the first stirrings of real power and knowledge inside, know that there is NO FEAR. Safe and warm and grounded in the knowledge of truth, feel your strength. Seriously. Hold on to this feeling, and use it to go forth and be better than you ever thought you could. No. Wait. Turn that around. Go out and be exactly who you have always known you could be. It's all in there, and it always has been.

Why do I feel different? Because I see now that my childish self didn't believe in me, and I married someone who didn't believe in me either, and in all honesty, I used him. I hid from what I was afraid of anyway and I hid behind him and blamed him for blocking me.

He's not there now. What's blocking me now is me, and knowing that, not being willing to hide anymore, makes me feel different.

What else feels different? The idea of dating again feels different. I won't have to present like someone else's reject. It's not that I failed as a wife, it's that I wasn't a boy.

OH MY GOD. "Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud...." Did I just write that? Mystic crystal revelations flying today! My father didn't stick around because I wasn't a boy, and neither did my husband. Seriously?

But for the first time I can see that it's not so simple. They left because they needed something else. And really it has nothing to do with me, who I am and what I did or didn't do. It has to do with them. No judgement, just different needs. But how many years have I spent wearing a horse hair shirt, flogging myself for not being enough, not feeling wanted, or chosen? Being chosen isn't about the offering, it's about the chooser. Giving these men so much of my energy and emotion was my choice. Knowing that it was me all along makes me feel different.

I feel different because now I know I can parent how I want, spend money how I want, decorate how I want, LIVE how I want. I feel different because seeing how deceptive and just plain WRONG Mr. Hate was in his choices punches up how right so many of mine have been. But not in relation to his choices, that's not exactly what I mean. I mean that now, today, I am standing firmer in my choices and realizing that in a lot of ways I am very, very smart. Very smart. My intuition is quite sound, and I feel I have proven it.

How is it different? How can it not be? I see my life entire now. I did not fail at my marriage, I was deceived, and I chose to deceive, and I do not choose that anymore. Truth brings a clarity and with it a tidal swell of strength that I have sorely needed. At first I was upended, carpet pulled out from under me, terrified. TERRIFIED. Blind, thrashing, wounded.

Now I am stood upright, grounded, blinking in the sun. Not abandoned, but definitely "left alone" in the "stop getting in my way leave me alone and let me get on with it" left alone. Let go. Freed.

I feel different because I am free of the burden of his happiness, free from the shackles of his limitations and insecurities, and released from the ropes of my own making. Not only can I run the race set before me, but I will run it. With focus and with purpose.

Because I am different now.

The thing about dark nights....

Is that eventually they pass. And thank GOD for that. It's been a hard week, with so many emotions I ran out of emoticons by Sunday. Can it really only be a week I have known the real truth? "Running the gamut" is an excellent phrase, btdubs. I feel exactly as if I have run a very, very long way. My lungs are literally sore, I feel spent and yet somehow charged that I have run so far.

People are amazingly kind. Seriously. Remind me of that on my "people suck" days. Because Anne Frank was totally, completely, and amazingly prescient when she noted that people are intrinsically good, deep down at the cellular level. Not many people know what has been going on with me, and I have fought my natural instinct to crow from roofs (it's the hair, I am descended from a long line of Scottish roosters), and kept pretty much my own counsel on this one. Well, I mean, other than the fact that I am discussing it here....LOL. Anyway. The people who do know have been incredibly kind. So much love is out there for me. Just when I thought I should just hang it up, that love was meant for some people, but that the Universe was trying to explain to me that the music had stopped and I had no chair. Love is not for me, I thought.

But there is love for me out there. I don't know if it will be the romantic kind, but oh, there is love in the world. And there is love in me. *I* always told the truth in my marriage, a fact that has been of huge solace to me this week. I am capable of great love. I can even imagine a future now where I am friendly, open and welcoming to Mr. Hate and Roomie, even if they are not. I have never met Roomie, but I will be nothing but excellent when I do. I need to be more than excellent from now on, and not for their benefit, but for my own. I am setting an example here that three very, very important people are watching, and I need them to see what real love looks like. So I need to up my game and get it together, because it matters more now than it ever has. His being completely unhealthy means that he will probably not respond in any sort of kind, but that does not excuse me. He spent last week dragging Roomie around Ireland, leaving a trail of lies that is still hanging over the air there, singeing the tops of the shamrocks. It is HARD not to confront him on them, especially as he seems to be telling lies that are not even worth the telling - like who hired a lawyer first, and who was responsible for dragging the divorce out so long. I have to wonder, when he tells such outrageous whoppers, does he even know they are lies, or does he actually believe the bullshit he slings? I am curious in an almost scientific observer way. How can he rewrite the truth so often and so far from center? Where does that come from? What does he actually believe? It is most peculiar. I need to get Scientific American or at least Alan Alda on this one.....remind me to google the science of lying. I could win the Nobel, write the definitive work, oops, the ADD has got my monkey mind, where was I?

Excellent. That's it. Excellent.

Going forward I am going to be as excellent as I can, and he won't respond in a healthy way, because he cannot respond in a healthy way, and I would be lying if I didn't admit that parts of me know my being normal and healthy and excellent will chap his ass raw and the schadenfreude is delicious (and a spelling WIN). But when it's all said and done, what will people remember? What will I remember? Karma is real, and he should be TERRIFIED.

In some strange way it's easier that he is a homosexual. The burden of failure is heavy to carry, and he did, and continues to, load as much of that burden on me as he can. But really, there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING I could have done to save our marriage. I just don't have that one thing he is looking for..... And putting that burden down is a huge relief. The fact that I accepted so much of it and carried it for so long is subject for much reflection, and a whole 'nother post.

What I need to do is pace myself. I am almost giddy with relief, and giddy can make a girl do some funky stuff. I need to take this slowly, acknowledging that grief will still back up on me from time to time, and I should not rush this. I imagine all sorts of Meryl Streep worthy moments where I appear on their doorstep with a big smile (and sometimes a plant, other times baked goods) and greet Roomie warmly. Um....ya. Maybe not this week. But I would like to meet him, someday. He spends a lot of time with my children, and it looks like he is here for a while, so we need to get acquainted. I want Mr. Hate to live in truth, and if Roomie is his truth then amen to the both of them, and could you do me a favor and stop lying? Ta.

If you were one of the people who answered the phone when I was crying this week, God bless you, and know that it meant everything to me. I am not finished with this, but sometimes a week is a lot more than seven days, and I do feel better, at least in this moment.

There is love for me in the world, and I have so much love in me. And truth. Lots and lots of truth.

Secrets and Lies

Quick back story: Several months after Mr. Hate moved into his palace of shame (the house he bought behind my back, with all the money in the brokerage account) I found out, through the children, that he had acquired a roommate. I asked him then what the relationship was between himself and this man, and he said "Just friends." I asked him this repeatedly. My lawyer asked him- twice. The weekend before we went to court for the last time I looked him right in the eye and asked him to tell me the truth. "I was your best friend for 20 years" I said. "I would like to hear the truth from you."

He looked me right in the eye and said he and Roomie were just friends.

I asked him again, last Sunday night, after something One said that made me uncomfortable. "No!" he said.

He lied.

He took the kids out for dinner on Tuesday, and I went over a friend's house to drop off some dresses I had hemmed for her, and to hang out a bit. And when I got home, the children told me he told them over dinner that he and Roomie were more than just friends. "Dad's GAY!" they chorused, thinking it all very funny.

I felt as if ice water was being dumped on me. What kind of a chicken shit coward makes his children proclaim the news that he was too ashamed to say? What kind of a man uses his children in that way? I could have freaked out. I could have been in a rage. I could have seriously unhinged, and they would have taken that heat. And he let them. I have no words vehement enough to express how I felt.

And let me make this point very clear: my issue is NOT with him being homosexual. There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with being homosexual.

I have huge issues with cowards and liars, however.

Rule number one of the divorce handbook says: "The children are never to be used as messengers. " and yet he does just that, again and again. And no matter what anyone says, he keeps right on doing it.

In that moment I wanted.....Oh, I wanted.....I don't know what. I wanted to make sure the kids were okay. And they were! Third looked at me with giant, troubled eyes and said "Mom, it's worse than you think. Dad smokes!" and I laughed a little, then. I have done a really, really, really good job raising these kids. They think it is worse to smoke than be gay. And they are right. It is.

They think it's HILARIOUS. One said "oh, please! With all the chrome in that house? Totally gay!" A little stereotypical, but basically well adjusted. And I feel glad about that. I really do. Growing up, we had one girl in school who's dad was known to be gay, and the scars across her wrists will serve as a lifelong testament to what her childhood was like. That will not be my children's experience, and for that I am grateful that we live when we do, and where we do. If my people had settled Texas or Nebraska this would be a much different story. But we live here in liberal Massachusetts, where this just won't be a very big deal. At best a curiosity, at worst, a predictor of how ignorant others are. Nothing for my kids to lose sleep over, anyway.

But I have lost sleep. I sent him an email with no body text, just a subject line "Explain yourself, please." No response. He did phone later in the week, to speak with the kids, and it did not go well. I told him we needed to have a conversation, and he refused. It seems we are NEVER going to discuss it. Ever. But I have some legitimate questions. How long? Was everything we had a lie? Was my health ever compromised? Was it happening when I asked him to tell me the truth? How is it that he looked at me and lied? If he knew this was his situation, why make the divorce so acrimonious?

If he had come to me years ago and told me, I would have been hurt, sure, but I also would have been his biggest ally. I could have been his friend on this path. We could have told the kids, together, could have worked out an equitable settlement for both of us, could have come up with a parenting plan that suited all of us. Instead, there has been anger, secrets, and lies. My older sister was shocked. Not that he was gay, but because he is such an incredible asshole, and continues to be so.

I am supposed to parent with this person for the next 60 years, and I cannot believe a word that comes out of his mouth. What do I do with that? What do I do with the dark, dark feeling that my whole life has been a lie? I remember at my wedding, how no one could believe a girl liked me had landed a guy like him. Handsome, wealthy, that whole European thing going on, so charming and sophisticated, and clearly going places. What was a guy like him ever doing with a girl like me?

Well, now I know. It was all a lie. A girl like me could never land a guy like him.

Not really.